How do you and your baby get a good night’s sleep?
When you hear your baby cry, letting him or her cry it out is one of the hardest things to do. Your instincts tell you to go and soothe your baby.
A study out of Temple University says that parents should let their baby cry it out.
Psychology Professor Marsha Weinraub says in an article on the Temple
website that babies need to learn to self-soothe, which they don’t learn if a parent is doing the soothing for them, such as nursing the baby back to sleep.
"The best advice is to put infants to bed at a regular time every night, allow them to fall asleep on their own and resist the urge to respond right away to awakenings."
There are many critics of the cry it out method, who will hopefully give their opinions in the comments area below, but the current science points to that as the best method, which is why we chose to use it with our son.
When we decided it was time to start, there were several nights that were absolute torture for us. In the morning, our son seemed to have suffered no harm, and he soon got it and he started self-soothing and falling asleep on his own.
Sometimes, he’s not happy to be put to bed and he cries a little, but it doesn’t last long, because he knows it will have no effect. Instead, he jumps up and down on his mattress to entertain himself and eventually goes to sleep. There are rare times when cries at night, but when it happens the cries are different. There’s the little cry that means he woke up and didn’t want to and it sort of tapers off and he’s asleep again, just like magic. Very unusually, we get the real cry and now we know it means something’s wrong and we as parents can respond and fix whatever problem he has.
How have you dealt with getting your child to sleep through the night? Do you let your child cry it out? Share your thoughts in the comment area below.
What utter nonsense! Abandonment issues, borderline personality disorders? Seriously? Spoken like someone with absolutely no practical experience dealing with babies (at least not effectively!). Your summation that women do this to get to work on time is offensive and insulting. Nothing like trying to guilt women (or men , by the way). Mothers and fathers DO know best, which hopefully means they don't listen to the likes of you. Step out of the stone age and join the rest of us in the 21st century.
The study does not state that parents should not ever pick a baby up when they are crying at night, it simply states, "resist the urge to respond right away to awakenings." The study is not talking about a new born and it only confirms what most pediatricians tell parents and what most parents have learned. Every child is different and every child's needs are different, and it is not necessary to run and pick up a child at the sound of their first whimper. It's fine to give a child a few minutes to see if they really do need a parents attention. Like all things it is a learning process for both the child and the parent.
I do agree with Jim that one should not minimize the importance of a good night's sleep - it does allow parents to be at their best for their children during the day.
Well put. It is indeed a learning process and most parents learn the difference between crying and genuine distress pretty quickly. I would never suggest letting any child "scream it out" but there is no harm in letting 6 month and older babies calm themselves when the are fussing. They almost always settle down on their own relatively quickly. To suggest this brief period of self-soothing constitutes "abandonment" is just ridiculous and irresponsible. To my way of thinking (and my children's pediatricians) it's just smart parenting.
You try, you adjust. You learn quickly which cries are "crying it out" and which are more serious. Now there are video monitors to make it easier to tell which is which. 12 years later all three are well adjusted and healthy.
Our twelve year old girl we let cry . I had to go outside because I jut wanted to pick her up. It lasted about 5-10 minutes. After a Week it lasted 1 minute . Although The 5-10 minutes felt like an hour . Our two younger boys, my wife has to sleep in the same room with them - They are 6 and 4 1/2 . The 4 1/2 sleep quick. The 6 year old, Could take h 1 Hr. now we're paying the price for not letting them cry themselves to sleep EVERY Child is so different. NO CORRECT ANSWER!!
We take away dvd, turn off tv as much as possible, try to keep exposure minimal from the start, but he just doesn't stop screaming for it. A lot is because at school other kids have cartoon lunch boxes and bags and there seems to be no way to provide a consistent message when they are exposed to what you are trying to control??